The Naked Reader Book Club: Public Displays of…

by Cherry Trifle

Sometimes it just can’t wait ’til you get home

Love stories are relative. Some people meet in bars. Some at work. Some on J-Date. I know one couple that hooked up randomly for anonymous sex in the bushes at a park-and-ride off the Jersey Turnpike and ended up sharing a life together for nearly 20 years. True story.

Sometimes it’s not about love, though. Sometimes it’s just about what happens in the bushes. Or the cab. Or that nook past the men’s room at the back of the bar where the payphone used to be. Sometimes it’s a heated itch that needs scratching so desperately, you just can’t wait. Shit, sometimes you don’t even need a partner.

Strangers on a train

Depending on your mood, level of intoxication and relative indifference to the smell of urine, the New York subway can actually be sexy in the right circumstances. Marco wasn’t feeling particularly randy as he waited for the Brooklyn-bound F Train that summer night, but as is often the case with men, it didn’t take much to alter his frame of mind.

He stepped on and took a seat in the middle, diagonally across from the only other rider in the car. “He was probably in his mid-20s, wearing a T-shirt and a pair of cut-off jeans,” Marco remembers. Now 45, he was thirtysomething at the time. “I’m not one to blatantly stare, but he was attractive and had nice legs, so I took a gander, and then looked away.”

Plagued by the temptation of more eye candy, however, he ventured another glance, this time noticing he could see right up the leg of those cut-offs. “And clearly he wasn’t wearing any underwear because I could see his business.” He let his gaze linger, “but not so long that I’d be caught,” he laughs, then took another peek and found it was bigger than before.

“I looked up and he was staring at me, smiling quite lasciviously. He motioned with his eyes for me to look down again, so I did,” Marco chuckles. “I mean, I didn’t want to be rude after he so graciously gave his permission.”

Now, the handsome stranger was at full mast “jutting well past the hem of his cut-offs, and it was a lovely specimen—not too small, but not freakishly large, circumcised, which is my preference, good head-to-shaft ratio. He was getting off on my watching him because he’d starting licking his lips and rubbing his nipples through his T-shirt.” The fact that he’d yanked up the shorts, further exposing himself, was probably a good indicator, as well.

He signaled for Marco to display his wares in a likewise manner, but Marco was not so readily dressed for indecent exposure—plus his stop was coming up—so he balked. “I gave him one last look as I left the train and he smiled,” says Marco, who admits he contemplated inviting the guy to come with him. “But I decided it was better to let what happened on the train stay on the train.”

(Cleis Press): “Clean and Pretty,” by Donna George Storey]]

Closing time

Dating a co-worker is not always a good idea, but it does have its advantages, particularly during the honeymoon period of a relationship, when sexual tension is high and mood-killing overexposure has yet to set it. Kevin, 39, and his ex, shared duties at a framing and poster shop. “We’d been flirting and teasing each other strongly one night near closing time,” he recalls. “By the time we were about to lock up, I was ready to do her right there, right then.”

She, however, had a different idea, suggesting he treat her to a solo performance.

“And that’s how I ended up stroking myself off in the middle of the store, while watching her get herself off,” he says, still a little incredulous that it happened. “And if we were itching to get to one another beforehand, this made us even itchier.” They continued the action later, back at her place. “To date, it was one of the most intense experiences I’ve had.”

Diddler on the roof

“I’ve always been a strong proponent of ‘me time,’” says Ray, who even while juggling a busy work and home schedule with his wife and son, carves out a niche for himself on the roof of his apartment building as often as possible. One of the tallest in the neighborhood, it affords some breathtaking views which, as it turns out, get him in the mood during colder months. He’s masturbated from this perch a few dozen times and found it to be exhilarating. “I’m overcome with sexual thoughts up there,” he admits.

Ray traces his chill-weather agenda to longtime fascination for undressing women wearing winter garb. “I’ve always found that look really sexy,” he says. “Leaving something to the imagination … and the process of peeling off multiple layers to get to that prize is such a turn-on.”

That being said, the frosty air and sweeping views make the imagery come alive. “The scene—taking off some of her clothes and fucking her while we enjoy the skyline of Manhattan—has regularly played itself out in my mind.”

To a point, in fact, where he simply has to take care of business. “The cold feels nice on my cock while I stroke myself off,” says Ray, “and I focus on that image of the woman leaning over the railing—wearing a chunky cable-knit sweater and nothing on the bottom—while I take her from behind.

It doesn’t take him long, he admits. “I am slightly fearful of being caught and generally worked up to a level that allows me to knock it out quickly, then relax in the lounge chair that I brought up, watching the planes crisscross in the night sky. It leaves me tranquil and relaxed.”

Catching a buzz

Jessica, 47, is single. “Terminally,” she laughs, but only with a very small amount of self-deprecation. “I’ve always been less into the men who chased me and more in the relatively unattainable,” she explains. “As a younger woman, I thought this was problematic, but now I realize I’m happier in pursuit than I am in a relationship. It’s a rhythm that works for me.”

Her current crush is a singer-songwriter who plays weekly in a Los Angeles bar. No band, just a beat-up straight-back piano that he pets and pounds, serenades and seduces, twice nightly—and almost always under the dreamy, sexed-up watch of Jessica’s thoroughly dilated and lovesick baby blues.

“It’s an epic crush,” she giggles. “Almost teenage in its utter absence of logic. He likes the attention, I think, but isn’t really interested. Fortunately, my skewed brainwaves find this intoxicating.”

And since she purchased a pair of vibrating panties, things have gotten a lot more exciting.

“They are phenomenal,” she says of the stretchy lace undies, fitted with a vibrator that can be set to pulse to MP3-driven tunes or—as she uses them—to vibe to ambient music. “He actually uses his fingers to bring me to climax while he’s playing. It’s the most intimate incredible sexy experience ever. He makes me come in a room full of people, with his music. I get wet just thinking about it.”

Jessica says he’s seemed a little more intrigued in her since the purchase, as well. “It’s probably musician’s ego,” she laughs. “It’s not that my orgasms are really that obvious,” she says. “I’m pretty discreet, but I’m sure he’s picking up on something that falls into rhythm with his music. Maybe I’ll manage to boat this bass, after all. I never thought public masturbation would hold the key to a man’s heart.”

I’m skeptical about that, personally. Though I do believe parts south may be up for negotiation.